Devolution: How should we form our unitary authorities?

As the devolution process gets under way, it is the upper-tier County Council which has been allowed to make all the running in East Sussex. But the shape of the unitary councils which the governments wants to see formed is still to be decided, and here Hastings Borough Council and the other lower-tier councils could have a say. Ideas will no doubt be aired at the Full Council meeting on Wednesday. Text by Nick Terdre, research and graphics by Russell Hall.

Unitary councils are now on the agenda – that is, assuming that East Sussex County Council’s application to join the Devolution Priority Programme, the fast track to a Sussex mayoralty, with May’s elections postponed on the way, is accepted by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Eighteen upper-tier councils in England have taken the same course, including 16 of the 21 county councils. It is not guaranteed that all will be accepted by Angela Rayner’s ministry, but ESCC’s bid would seem to have a good chance of being among those that are.

For lower tier councils, with the presumed exception of Conservative councillors,  the overwhelming impression is that the ESCC Cabinet  – which consists entirely of Tory councillors, even though the Conservatives are in a minority – is happy to hijack the process, seeking to  extend their period of office which should end this April and play the dominant role in making decisions about devolution for the county.

Their decision to apply to join the devolution fast track and seek to have May’s elections postponed was taken without consulting other parties or councils, a situation which does not seem to bother the government despite all its fine words about strengthening local democracy in the devolution white paper.

(An extraordinary meeting of the ESCC Full Council did debate the proposal put to the Cabinet by its chief executive, but only because Green councillors exercised their right to call it. A motion that no request should be made to postpone the elections failed.)

Decision soon

A ruling on the applications should soon be made by the ministry, which will then open the way to a six-to-eight week public consultation on mayoral devolution – the closest the public gets to speaking its mind in the whole devolution process.

Along with the Brighton & Hove unitary authority and West Sussex County Council, which have made similar applications, the ESCC Cabinet envisages a mayoral authority for Sussex and unitary authorities in East and West Sussex to go alongside the one in Brighton & Hove.

The proposed timeline of events can be seen in the above chart. Following the public consultation, indicative plans for reorganising local government are due to be submitted - again by the ESCC Cabinet - in March, and a mayoral election will take place in May 2026, when a mayoral combined county authority for Sussex will be formed. This will be followed in 2027 by elections to shadow unitary authorities - in our case an East Sussex unitary authority.

By ‘shadow’ is meant representatives will be elected to oversee the setting up of the unitary leading into 2028 when it is due to come into operation. At this time the mayoral combined county authority will give way to a mayoral combined authority, and HBC, along with Rother District Council and the other East Sussex local authorities, will be abolished.

The government has expressed its determination to implement its plans, as was made clear notably when Angela Rayner said she would be willing to “knock heads together” to achieve agreement when local interests were unable to reach it. In addition to sticks, it has also dangled the carrot of a “multi-departmental, long-term integrated funding settlement” to those upper-tier councils which become mayoral combined authorities, to be made available 18 months after they achieve this status.

Different combinations

However there are different combinations of divisions and wards which could provide the basis for unitary authorities in Sussex, some of which were alluded to at the HBC Cabinet meeting on 6 January, when all councillors were invited to have their say.

If the proposed Sussex-wide combination sketched above goes ahead, Brighton & Hove in itself does not have the numbers to meet the government’s desired population level of 500,000 or more. Exceptions may be granted, according to Jim McMahon, the minister of state for Local Government and English Devolution, and decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis.

As the above chart of potential unitary footprints or areas shows, Brighton & Hove could achieve the target by forming an area stretching westward as far as Arun, giving it a population of 513,494. The population of the East Sussex unitary would be 550,720 and West Sussex 656,807.

At the HBC Cabinet meeting Cllr Judy Rogers made a strong plea for a unitary bringing together coastal towns on the grounds that they share the same characteristics. The above chart illustrates a coastal strip running from Adur in the west to Eastern Rother in the east, with a combined population of 681,710.

This includes Brighton & Hove, which again according to Rogers could be expected to get the advantages in a Sussex-wide mayoralty.

The Sussex Coast area could go with an inland unitary covering the Sussex Weald, with a population of 509,013, and a Sussex Western Downs and Coast area gathering 530,298.

Dividing Sussex into more than three areas is likely to result in unitary areas with less than 500,000, as is the case with the four areas - the Western Downs, the Metropolitan area centred on Brighton, the Wealden Coast and the High Weald - illustrated in the above map.

Also at the HBC Cabinet meeting, council leader Julia Hilton reported that she had been in contact with Folkestone & Hythe council, which is run by a Green/Liberal Democrat coalition, to explore the idea of an alternative coastal unitary.

This one breaks through the county boundary into Kent (another county council which has applied to join the Devolution Priority Programme). To get close to a population of 500,000, it would have to include neighbouring areas such as Tunbridge Wells borough and part of Ashford borough.

However, that would go against the government’s ambition to align public service area boundaries for police, health services, probation, fire and rescue and job centres (which are already aligned with Sussex) with those of mayoral combined authorities. Where geographies align with Police and Crime Commissioner and Fire and Rescue authorities (as in Sussex), mayors will, by default, be responsible for those services..

How open the government will be to alternative suggestions for unitary authorities when its primary interlocutor is the upper-tier councils remains to be seen.

Empowering communities?

Angela Rayner, deputy prime minister and secretary of state for Housing, Communities and Local Government, stresses in her foreword to the devolution white paper that the policy “means a permanent shift of power away from Whitehall and into the hands of those who know their communities best. It means efficient and accountable local and regional government, with local champions who understand their local places, their identities and strengths, and how to harness them,” and that it “will empower communities to take back control from Westminster.”

It sounds encouraging for local democracy, but as many lower-tier councillors and opposition ESCC councillors are finding, these sentiments are hard to reconcile with a reorganisation of local government centred round single mayors deciding policies for regions with a population of 1.5m or more, alongside the abolition of the governmental layer closest to local communities and individuals, the lower-tier authorities.

Town and parish councils will continue to exist, and may even flourish with an increased call on their services, though the white paper has little to say about them. But in boroughs like Hastings, these do not exist, so the lowest level of local democracy will be the unitary council, although such local councils could be set up for Hastings neighbourhoods.

 

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